Parashat Terumah 5783 — 02/25/2023
Beginning with Bereishit 5781 (17 October 2020) we embarked on a new format. We will be considering Rambam’s (Maimonides’) great philosophical work Moreh Nevukim (Guide for the Perplexed) in the light of the knowledge of Vedic Science as expounded by Maharishi Mahesh Yogi. The individual essays will therefore not necessarily have anything to do with the weekly Torah portion, although certainly there will be plenty of references to the Torah, the rest of the Bible, and to the Rabbinic literature. For Bereishit we described the project. The next four parshiyyot, Noach through Chayei Sarah, laid out a foundational understanding of Vedic Science, to the degree I am capable of doing so. Beginning with Toledot we started examining Moreh Nevukim.
Shemot 25:1-27:19
Today I would like to conclude Rambam’s third reason for preventing the beginning of study with divine science, viz the length of the preliminaries.
There is also a necessity of another kind for achieving knowledge of the preliminary studies. It arises from the fact that when a man seeks to obtain knowledge quickly, many doubts occur to him, and he moreover quickly understands objections – I mean to say the destruction of a particular doctrine, this being similar to the demolition of a building. Now the establishment of doctrines as true and the solution of doubts can only be grounded upon many premises taken from these preliminary studies. One engaged in speculation without preliminary study is therefore comparable to someone who walked on his two feet in order to reach a certain place and, while on his way, fell into a deep well without having any device to get out of there before he perishes. It would have been better for him if he had foregone walking and had quietly remained in his own place.
The point of the preliminaries is to give us the tools to attain certain knowledge. To Rambam this meant primarily logic, so that we can start with premises and reach unassailable conclusions. If this foundation is not solid, the whole structure of knowledge becomes shaky, and the result is doubt. One feels as if one is standing on shifting sands. Every conclusion that one comes to is doubtful, because the path from premise to conclusion is not clear.
There are some problems with this approach to gaining knowledge however. The first has to do with the premises. Premises (really axioms, or first premises) are the starting point of any logical system and are supposed to be self-evident. Yet, by definition, we cannot prove the axioms, and while they may be self-evident to some, to others they may not be. Differences in language, culture and experience, both shared and individual, color our perception of the nature of reality. Even with the most air-tight logic in the world, if the axioms of the system are changed, all the results that are derived from those axioms may change. Statements that are false in one system may be true in another.
Perhaps the most famous example of this is the famous Fifth Postulate of Euclid’s geometry. The Fifth Postulate, also called the Parallel Postulate, asserts that given a (straight) line, L, and a point, P, not on L, there is exactly one line through P that is parallel to L. This seems obvious enough, but all attempts to prove it from the other postulates failed. Eventually it was realized that you can replace the Parallel Postulate with two alternatives: (a) There are no lines parallel to L going through P and (b) There are many lines parallel to L going through P. It turns out that alternative (a) corresponds to the surface of a sphere, while (b) corresponds to the surface of a saddle. These geometries are called non-Euclidean, and in fact, Euclidean geometry is only a very special case of these generalized geometries that applies to a flat surface. It is extremely useful, because in any complicated surface, a small enough area will be flat, but it is much less generally applicable than once thought.
The point here is that premises that we think are self-evident are often not so self-evident, and in fact, may not even be a very true description of reality. Relying on logic based on a set of “self-evident” premises is not as foolproof as Rambam apparently thinks it is.
There is another, more profound fly in this ointment. In 1931, mathematician Kurt Gödel published a theorem in which he showed that in any axiomatic system rich enough to contain the natural numbers (0, 1, 2, 3…) there are true statements that cannot be proven to be true. Adding such a statement as an axiom doesn’t help, as the proof will find another such statement, ad infinitum. What this means is that a purely logical system is inherently incapable of giving complete knowledge of whatever space it is covering. This is similar to Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle in physics, which tells us that quantum mechanical systems inherently cannot specify, for example, both position and momentum with complete accuracy. This is a built-in limitation of physics, not a mere incapacity of our instrumentation. These results show us that complete, accurate knowledge is not available to us from the standpoint of logic and measurement – that is, using the intellect (which deals with duality) or the senses (which deal with external objects).
Vedic Science’s approach is not through the outer world, but through the inner one. At the very basis of our being as a conscious entity is the completely abstract Pure Consciousness. As we have discussed, all creation arises from Pure Consciousness and therefore Pure Consciousness contains within itself all the laws of nature that run creation. Since Pure Consciousness is consciousness, it can be experienced by a conscious being with a physical structure rich enough to support this experience, and that is our human nervous system. The technology associated with Vedic Science gives a systematic way to lead the mind to the experience of Pure Consciousness, and the repeated experience of Pure Consciousness stabilizes it in the mind so that it is always available. When this happens, we have the entire structure of creation within our own awareness, and anything we want to know about “divine science” – that is (in my reading), the way Pure Consciousness manifests itself into creation – can be directly cognized as the internal dynamics of our own consciousness.
Now it is certainly true that even the Vedic Science approach has some “preliminaries.” We have to learn to allow the mind to transcend effortlessly from the surface level of thought, through all the levels of abstraction, until we experience, even if only briefly, Pure Consciousness. And we have to do this regularly until the mind and nervous system are completely purified and can sustain Pure Consciousness along with waking, dreaming and sleeping states of consciousness. These are preliminaries only in the sense that they are necessary conditions to having the experience of higher states of consciousness. We are not able to skip them out of laziness or impatience, because we are not talking about gaining intellectual understanding of something, which we might be able to convince ourselves that we have attained. Rather, we are talking about a direct experience that can be verified, nowadays physiologically, but also, as Maharishi (and perhaps Rambam) explains, on the basis of comparison of experience with Scriptural dicta.
Both direct experience and intellectual understanding are necessary for complete knowledge. Rambam gives us a program to provide the latter, Maharishi has given us a program to provide the former.
Next week we’ll start looking at reason #4 for not beginning with “divine science,” viz. the differences in the natural dispositions of different people.
*********************************************************************************************************************************
Commentary by Steve Sufian
Parashat Terumah
“Terumah” means “gift” or “offering.” In this parshah, Gd asks our ancestors to give a gift of an offering from their heart and then Gd gives the Great Gift of detailed instructions for building a Sanctuary so that our ancestors will see Gd dwelling within the Sanctuary, Gd “may dwell in their midst.” The detailed instructions make it clear that the Sanctuary is an expression of the same pattern that is present in the universe and in the human body. In the human body, for example, Gd created 248 limbs which correspond to the 248 positive commandments of the Bible — in the Sanctuary, there were 48 beams, 100 hooks and 100 loops.
Obviously, Gd is Everywhere, Omnipresent – Gd dwells everywhere so this statement “may dwell in their midst” means that in the Sanctuary, humans will be aware of Gd’s Presence – the harmony between their open hearts and the Sanctuary created in part by their offerings will be so great it will resonate with the personalities and physiologies of all who enter, even our ancestors who just a few days before were terrified by the sound of the Lrd’s voice.
Neither modern synagogues — for example, Beth Shalom — nor modern homes seem to be built according to the plan of the Sanctuary so what can we do in order to be aware of Gd’s dwelling within our synagogues, our homes, our minds, feelings, egos, bodies, souls?
The key seems to be in Gd’s command to Moses:
“Speak to the children of Israel, and have them take for Me an offering; from every person whose heart inspires him to generosity, you shall take My offering.”
By behaving with generosity to all, we make offerings to Gd because “love thy neighbor as thyself – Self“ is inextricably intertwined with “love the Lord, thy Gd, with all thy heart, with all thy soul and with all thy might.”
Another way to make offerings to Gd and to be aware of Gd’s Presence is through the daily prayers of our religion: waking, morning, afternoon, evening and bedtime. These have the value of opening our hearts even though we may be fatigued or stressed, and the Joy of Gd’s Presence enters into the words and to our awareness.
A third way is to come to our synagogue or to connect to services through Zoom.
Whatever way we can offer to Gd, let us offer and let us be fully aware of Gd’s Presence dwelling within us and around us.
Baruch HaShem.